Bronze Age POO from ‘Britain’s Pompeii’ reveals how locals were riddled with parasites from filthy ‘marsh diet’
ANCIENT poo reveals how a dodgy "marsh diet" left townsfolk at "Britain's Pompeii" riddled with parasites.
The faeces prove that Bronze Age Brits living in the doomed town were infected by intestinal worms.
The marshland settlement at Cambridgeshire's Must Farm burned down in a catastrophic fire around 3,000 years ago.
And the area has become a dream for archaeologists, with artefacts from prehistoric houses preserved in mud below the waterline.
Findings include food, cloth and jewellery – as well as waterlogged "coprolites", which are pieces of human poo.
Using microscopy techniques, experts at the University of Cambridge were able to detect ancient parasite eggs within the faeces.
Eating local grub from the marshy area is now believed to be the cause of these ancient infections.
"We have found the earliest evidence for fish tapeworm, Echinostoma worm, and giant kidney worm in Britain," said Dr Piers Mitchell, Cambridge's Department of Archaeology
"These parasites are spread by eating raw aquatic animals such as fish, amphibians and molluscs.
"Living over slow-moving water may have protected the inhabitants from some parasites, but put them at risk of others if they ate fish or frogs."
These Bronze Age settlers likely disposed of their waste in the water.
And because water in the fens would have been stagnant, this waste would've accumulated in the surrounding channels.
Experts say this provided fertile ground for parasites to infect local wildlife.
If eaten raw or poorly cooked, these animals would've spread to the village residents.
"The dumping of excrement into the freshwater channel in which the settlement was built, and consumption of aquatic organisms from the surrounding area, created an ideal nexus for infection with various species of intestinal parasite," said Cambridge's Marissa Ledger, the study's first author.
Fish tapeworms can reach up to 10 metres in length, and live coiled up in our intestines.
Heavy infection can lead to anaemia, which can be fatal.
"As writing was only introduced to Britain centuries later with the Romans, these people were unable to record what happened to them during their lives," said Ledger, a PhD student at Cambridge's Department of Archaeology.
"This research enables us for the first time to clearly understand the infectious diseases experienced by prehistoric people living in the Fens."
She added: "Both humans and dogs were infected by similar parasitic worms, which suggests the humans were sharing their food or leftovers with their dogs."
Must Farm is located in a wetland area and it is these waterlogged conditions that have kept it so intact, making it a Bronze Age time capsule.
Houses at the site are said to be the "most completely preserved prehistoric domestic structures found in Britain."
Experts at the site are now certain that it was burnt down by a fire that started internally and was only inhabited for around a year.
This would have been a tragedy for the supposed 50 to 80 inhabitants of the site who lived there when it burnt down.
No solid evidence of people dying in the fire has been found yet and the only human remains at the site have been tiny bone fragments including pieces of skull, belonging to two individuals.
However, formal burial grounds in the Bronze Age weren't common and some archaeologists think it would have been normal for the Bronze Age Brits to dispose bits of skeletons around the site.
What was the Bronze Age?
Here's what you should know...
- The Bronze Age was the period of time between the Stone Age and the Iron Age
- It is characterised by the common use of bronze at the time and also the start of some urban civilisations
- In Europe, the Bronze Age occurred from around 3200 to 600 BC
- During this time period, ancient empires started to trade luxury goods
- Some civilisations also developed writing
Cambridge's Mark Knight and his colleagues now claim to have created the first “definitive time frame to Must Farm’s occupation and destruction" in around 1,000 to 800BC.
The houses found at the site were round and set up on stilts above an ancient river.
The fire is thought to have burnt the platform that the houses stood on, sending them falling into the river and leaving all the artefacts to be preserved in silt.
The first find at the site came in the form of a fancy sword discovered in 1969 and since then other discoveries have included ancient food, jewellery, clothes and a wooden wheel.
All the findings have taught archaeologists around the world so much more about daily life in the Bronze Age, architecture and material culture and they are certain that even more information from Must Farm is just waiting to be revealed.
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Last week, Tutankhamun's "cursed" golden sarcophagus was pictured outside his tomb for the first time ever.
And, from headless vikings to ‘screaming’ mummies, here are some of the most gruesome ancient corpses ever found.
Would you like to have lived in Bronze Age Britain? Let us know in the comments!
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